Seven Months

19102006

So a lot of people want to know what Alex looks like today, at seven months old.

It turns out this isn’t the most flattering picture of him. He stayed in his pajamas all day today, a fact Molly will surely remind me about for years to come. You see, last night, Molly started feeling a little sick. And sure enough, this morning, she woke up feeling sick, and decided that she would stay home today. She was looking forward to spending a good part of the day in bed, recovering from the stomach flu. (If “looking forward” to the stomach flu is the right term.)

Now, as is normal in the mornings, I took care of Alex while Molly ate breakfast. I was getting dressed for the day while Alex played in the rug in our room when I thought, “My, one of our cats has really made the upstairs catbox kind of stinky.” After a minute or two of fussing with my shirt and combing my hair, I thought, “You know, I’ve never smelled a cat box this stinky!” So I walked out to see what had happened in the cat box. I was expecting — well, I don’t know what I was expecting. But what I found was an unused and unsmelly cat box. That made me worried. Cautiously, I walked back into our bedroom (where Alex was happily on the rug), sniffed… YUCK! My son smells like a cat box!

So I rushed him to the changing table. And I found a diaper overflowing with green, slimy stuff with a stench that made me gag. “This isn’t normal!” I thought. “Alex must be sick!” It makes sense that if Molly is sick, Alex would be sick, too. (Although in this case, I think that Alex got it first. Several kids have been sick in daycare this week.)

So I went to work. And instead of an easy day curled up in bed recovering, poor Molly had to spend the day as a primary care giver. (You can’t bring a sick kid to daycare!) And to top it off, Alex seemed happy and healthy all day. Molly’s convinced that there was green stuff in the diaper because Alex ate peas last night. And the smell? Well, it is a diaper we’re talking about. (But I still swear that this was more gross than anything I’ve seen in my long seven months of parenthood.)

All of this was a really long way of explaining why, in his seven-month picture, Alex is still in his pajamas. Like his mother, he didn’t change out of his pajamas all day.

One other thing I feel compelled to note: His hair doesn’t look this red in real life. Something about the camera makes it seem red.